


Capernoited

by houndinghell



Series: Dragon Age Prompts [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Pre-Relationship, Romance, So much flirting, flirting like it's the game and this is the Orlesian Ball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3118568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houndinghell/pseuds/houndinghell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rare quiet evening for Inquisitor Nina Trevelyan takes a turn for the interesting when she notices a certain Knight Commander in the tavern. When she goes to tease him, things do not go quite the way she'd imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Capernoited

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 'femharel' on tumblr, beta read by tumblr users 'benefaris' and 'karnsteins.' Many thanks to all of them for helping this piece come together! Additionally fic can be located on my tumblr, 'houndinghell,' along with many others I have not posted here.
> 
> Enjoy!

cap·er·noi·ted  
 _adjective_

DEFINITION: MUDDLEHEADED, TIPSY

 

"Are you… drunk?"

Cullen  _giggles_ , which is answer enough, even if he does turn it into a cough within a second or two. The bottle he is not-so-subtly edging away from is also rather damning to his case.

"Er, no. That would be very unproportional. I mean, professional! Unproportionally unprofessional. Inquisitor. Ma’am. Your worship." He coughs again.

Nina covers her mouth with her hand to push down the smile that threatens to escape. She sweeps a quick glance over the rest of the tavern; most everyone else is gone, or otherwise occupied in conversation and discreet corners. There is no one left to pay attention to the compromising behavior of the Knight Commander, thankfully, though it also means there’s no one to help him.

"Right, of course you’re not. Silly me. But Cullen, how many times have I asked you to call me Nina?" She speaks from behind the splay of her fingers, the better to keep the laughter trapped down. He would never live it down if she did, let alone look her in the eye, and she does have such a fondness for staring at his eyes. She’s not about to risk losing the chance to do that as often as she can. "We’ve been working together for long enough, I think."

"Not long enough," Cullen sighs, his shoulders sagging low and his brows sinking down. A frown tugs at the corners of Nina’s mouth. Before she can even take the breath to ask just how much longer it  _will_ take, Cullen continues. “I should be a much happier man if you had come into my life sooner than this. Being around you, it’s…”

Cullen takes his time settling on the word he wants next. It’s not unusual for him—he’s always this cautious in everything he says to her. There’s so  _much_  caution in him, and maybe even fear, to keep from saying or doing the wrong thing to her. What she’s done to instill such a feeling in him, she isn’t sure.

After half a minute, Cullen nods slightly to himself. “It’s good,” he says, and damn this man for the way his voice dips low and honeyed on that one word,  _good_ , like he’s trying to cram about a dozen score of other compliments into that single sound. Nina takes in a sharp breath and presses her thumb so hard against her face it cuts the slick inside of her cheek against her teeth. The palm across her mouth muffles the sound at least, though it does nothing to hide the rising flush.

She’s never heard him be so forward with her, or at all, really. During her interactions with him, he has always either been a paragon of that professionalism he’d mentioned, or else flustered and shy, quick to escape her few attempts at flirtation. This is new territory, for both of them.

"Are you absolutely sure you’re not drunk?" she asks, her voice rising up a note too high at the end.

Cullen bows his head slightly and looks up at her through his lashes with those rich sunlit brown eyes. They lock her in place  _somehow_ , and if she didn’t know better, Nina would call it magic with how strong the feeling is. Her cheeks are flaming hot now and edging all the way down to her neck and shoulders, burning her skin as it goes.

Worst of all is the tiny  _smirk_  on the Knight Commander’s face—that knowing little smirk he wears when he knows he’s  _won_ , when he’s just executed a plan  _perfectly_  on the chess board or the war table. She’s seen it a dozen times before, but never used quite like this. There isn’t even any compensation in the slight blush on his cheeks. If anything, it only makes her want to choke and die on the spot that much more.

Maker damn it all, and him especially.

"Perhaps, a little," he confesses in a voice that’s still too husky to be anything like fair. "I was persuaded to try and ‘let loose’ for the night. I might have gotten carried away."

“That can happen, sometimes. In the right situation.”

Neither of them move. He has yet to stop staring at her—not that ‘staring’ is in any way an adequate word to describe the way he looks at her. It’s too intense for that, like she’s something fascinating he’s trying to unravel to find the secrets layered beneath.

Nina is no better in her gazing at him. In the amber warmth of the fire, he is awash in gold, and a thousand times more precious than mere metal. Without the distractions of speech, she is free to trace her gaze over his face with abandon: down the sharp line of his nose to the moon-white scar that puckers the skin above the slightly chapped lips she’s already memorized the shape of. From there she can sweep her eyes up the cut of his jaw and the dusting of stubble there, over cheeks with laughter lines and to his brow. A stray hair curls against his forehead, loosened after a long day of work, and leads her back down to his eyes, which  _will not stop staring at her_.

"I… I should…" Nina is truly on fire now under the heat of his eyes. She never knew that a shade of brown like that could burn. "Do you need help getting back to your quarters? What with the stairs and the-" She swallows hard as her eyes settle down to catch the look of his mouth again. It takes more effort than she’s proud of to make herself look up again. "The… ladder."

Cullen shakes his head, his hair catching the light— _Maker’s breath, how far gone is she?_ —as he pushes himself to his feet and into her space so she has to crane her neck to look at him. He wobbles for only a breath’s length before he gets his balance back and he is all smooth grace again. The eye contact is broken, but the spell he has over her holds fast, purely by his nearness. The air is no longer thick with the smell of beer and sweat, but leather and wool and the tang of citrus of all things, sweet on her tongue and in her lungs. She breathes it in deep.

"No, thank you, Inquisitor. I feel a bit clearer minded now. I’ll be able to manage the short trip to my rooms without too much chaos, I think." He shoots her a wry look. "Besides, I’m sure you have more important things to attend to than your intoxicated advisor."

There’s no consideration involved. Nina just drops her hand to her side and blurts out, “You’re important.”

At long last, his blush deepens to match hers. “I. Uhh.” He rubs his hand over the back of his neck and smiles to himself. That smile alone could start wars, she’s sure of it. Hell, she’d start one over it—or for it. “That’s… very kind of you to say.”

She takes a small step forward, bringing them only inches apart now. “I mean it. You’re important.”

The smile on his face spreads, not  by his mouth, but through the way his eyes illuminate, like a lamp behind a stained glass window. Her heart can’t quite decide if it wants to skip a beat or go double time, and instead trips and stutters over itself, almost painfully so in her ever tightening chest. “Thank you, Inquisitor.”

“Cullen, please, call me-”

The rest of it dies quite suddenly as his gloved hand catches up hers and brings it to his face so as to press his mouth to the backs of her fingers, right in the place a signet right might be, if she were the type to wear one. His breath is hot and his lips are soft, impossibly soft, and they’re pressed to her bare skin.

It is the first time he has ever touched her bare skin.

She feels electric to every damned nerve in her body, crackling and zinging and so full to bursting it nearly hurts. As close as he is, she could count every eyelash that brushes against his cheeks, if she had the time and the ability for it. As it is, she is frozen in the place he has captured her. Even her mind is in that same moment, trying to process the sensation that lingers even after he pulls away and straightens up.

"Inquisitor," he murmurs, like the word is a prayer. Like she’s worthy of that. Brown eyes meet green for a moment more, and then he bows as he takes his leave of her. The edge of his cloak runs over her arm like a caress and makes her shiver just as if it were one.

Anyone looking to Nina now would see her wide eyed and statuesque, her arm still half outstretched to a phantom mouth. On the inside, her pulse is frantic, desperate to push itself through every vein in her body and spread the frenzy of it all. It is an effort to move as slow as she does in order to bring the hand he touched to her mouth and press her fingers to her lips.

"I think… I think I need a drink."


End file.
